Eliasson Wants Accord on Rights Council

By Nick Wadhams
March 11, 2006
The Washington Post
Original Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031100330.html

UNITED NATIONS -- The top U.N. negotiator for a proposed Human Rights Council said he would put off seeking final approval for the body in a last bid to overcome U.S. objections.
Jan Eliasson, the president of the U.N. General Assembly, rejected U.S. demands to reopen negotiations on a document detailing the proposals for the Human Rights Council, a central element of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's bid to reform the United Nations.
Doing so would invite a host of other nations to introduce changes that they had sought but put aside, he said Friday.
The massive reaction I'm receiving is that opening up the text or asking me to do some ... changes is going to be the Pandora's Box syndrome, Eliasson told reporters.
The Human Rights Council would replace the long-discredited Commission on Human Rights, in which some of the worst rights-offending countries have protected one another from condemnation. In recent years, commission members have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.
The United States is now the only country holding up approval of the council. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton insisted the only way forward was to reopen negotiations on the text.
The Americans want members of the council to be elected by a two-thirds vote, not the simple majority now called for, to keep rights abusers out. They also want the text to explicitly bar any nation from joining the council if it is under sanction by the United Nations. The current draft says only that such measures would be taken into account when deciding membership.
As of now, we have not found very much support for reopening the text and therefore the prospect of amending the text has not made much progress, Bolton said. But now we have a few more days, we are going to continue to work on it.
Eliasson could put the current text up for a vote, but said his goal is to achieve consensus. A vote would also allow countries to introduce amendments that would fundamentally change the shape of the council.
Still, he said he would have no choice but to call for a vote next week even if a compromise cannot be found with the United States. He and Annan said it was time to move on to other crucial U.N. reforms, such as an overhaul of U.N. management.
I think that the longer a decision is delayed the more harmful it is, Annan said.
Eliasson suggested the United States could join consensus and then express reservations in a statement afterward. He also noted that the current draft says the council will be studied again within five years, when the American ideas could be reconsidered.
Bolton shot down that notion.
If you want to fix a text, fix a text, he said, before invoking one of his favorite metaphors: Better to continue to try to get our butterfly than to accept this caterpillar with lipstick on it.